Accenture plc Plans Quarterly Dividend of $1.48 (NYSE:ACN)

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, December 19th,RTT News reports. Investors of record on Thursday, January 16th will be given a dividend of 1.48 per share by the information technology services provider on Friday, February 14th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.70%.

Accenture has raised its dividend payment by an average of 12.3% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 20 years. Accenture has a payout ratio of 46.3% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Accenture to earn $13.76 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $5.92 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 43.0%.

Accenture Price Performance

NYSE:ACN opened at $347.61 on Thursday. The company has a market cap of $217.31 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.41, a P/E/G ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $387.51. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $360.14 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $336.31.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.83% and a net margin of 11.20%. The business had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $3.27 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts expect that Accenture will post 12.74 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, COO John F. Walsh sold 5,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, October 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $373.24, for a total value of $1,866,200.00. Following the sale, the chief operating officer now directly owns 17,593 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $6,566,411.32. This trade represents a 22.13 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total value of $1,096,746.70. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 6 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,062.20. The trade was a 99.81 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 36,298 shares of company stock worth $13,372,661 in the last ninety days. 0.07% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Accenture declared that its Board of Directors has approved a stock repurchase plan on Thursday, September 26th that permits the company to buyback $4.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the information technology services provider to reacquire up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are usually an indication that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages have commented on ACN. Mizuho raised their price target on shares of Accenture from $352.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 18th. Bank of America lifted their price objective on Accenture from $365.00 to $388.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. BMO Capital Markets upped their target price on Accenture from $380.00 to $390.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. Piper Sandler boosted their price objective on Accenture from $395.00 to $422.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, December 12th. Finally, Barclays upped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $350.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, September 30th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Accenture has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $374.50.

About Accenture

Accenture plc, a professional services company, provides strategy and consulting, industry X, song, and technology and operation services worldwide. The company offers application services, including agile transformation, DevOps, application modernization, enterprise architecture, software and quality engineering, data management; intelligent automation comprising robotic process automation, natural language processing, and virtual agents; and application management services, as well as software engineering services; strategy and consulting services; data and analytics strategy, data discovery and augmentation, data management and beyond, data democratization, and industrialized solutions comprising turnkey analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions; metaverse; and sustainability services.